Welcome to Survival of the Fittest, a RPing board loosely based off of Koshun Takami's Battle Royale, with its own unique plot and spin on the 'deadly game'. We've been around quite a while, and are now in our thirteenth year, so don't worry about us going anywhere any time soon!

If you're a newcomer and interested in joining, then please make sure you check out the rules. You may also want to read the FAQ, introduce yourself and stop by the chat to meet some of our members. If you're still not quite sure where to start, then we have a great New Member's Guide with a lot of useful information about getting going. Don't hesitate to PM a member of staff (they have purple usernames) if you have any questions about SOTF and how to get started!

THE MARTHA KINGMAN CEMETERY"THIS GRAVEYARD HAD ITS BEGINNING IN A PROMISE BETWEEN TWO YOUNG LOVERS, MARTHA KINGMAN AND LEWIS KINGMAN, WHO WERE SCHOOLMATES. THEY AGREED THAT THEY WOULD BE BURIED UNDER A GREAT OAK TREE WHICH STOOD HERE.

"MARTHA, WHO MARRIED LEWIS AT FIFTEEN, DIED IN 1871 AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-SIX.HERS WAS THE FIRST GRAVE ON THIS SITE,WHICH LEWIS LAID OUT AS A FAMILY BURY-ING GROUND. HE WENT ON TO FIND THE TOWN OF KINGMAN IN 1882.

"THE PRESENT MONUMENT IS NOT THE ORIGINAL, DESIGNED BY KINGMAN, BUT ALARGER ONE ERECTED BY THE CITY IN 1883.ITS BASE COVERS THE GRAVES OF KINGMAN,HIS WIFE, HIS FATHER AND CHILD AND OF HIS GRANDCHILDREN.

"THE GRAVEYARD REMAINS THE PROPERTYOF THE CITY AND CONTINUES TO BE A FAMILYBURYING GROUND."

Cute story.

It all falls apart the second you search Lewis Kingman on Google and discover the man was all over the Western United States during the early 1870's. He was integral to mapping out the railway system. So did he just carry the woman's body all around the Oregon Trail or whatever? Or did he drop her wherever and left? Regardless of what actually happened, this story is bullshit. This graveyard is bullshit. Everything is bullshit.

Scout Pfeiffer sat on a headstone facing the grave marker overlooking a moss-ridden crypt. She spat, chucked a rock at the grave marker. It bounced off the corner with a loud ping and tumbled into the weeds skirting the along the old pavement.

The cemetery was dark, darker still from the new moon and the dense clouds. Dark nights for ended lives. The street lamps from the street were the graveyard's only source of light. They worked relatively well, bathing the rows of tombstones in a sickly-sodium yellow. It reminded Scout of a dreadful straight-to-dvd zombie movie she saw as a child. Well, at least the street lamps meant she wasn't stumbling over her own two feet like a blind idiot. Small wonders.

... Scout was in a bad mood. Actually, understatement of the century. Scout was in a shit mood, because her cunt Mother had to go get engaged to some beefcake asshole without even bothering to tell her own flesh and blood about it. Jesus. If she wasn't such a goody two-shoe Girl Scout she'd be chucking rocks through some poor bastard's window. Maybe her mother did raise her right.

She threw another, smaller rock. It hit the corner again and fell into the grass, out of sight. Scout grunted.

Chucking rocks around a graveyard though? Yeah, nobody's going to get upset over some kid hanging around here in the middle of the night. Scout knew from experience. She has never been caught hanging around this graveyard, not in her two years of living in this rattown. So, yeah. What were the chances of 'them' catching her now?

When she first moved to Kingman, she found herself gravitating towards the local cemetery (the ONLY cemetery). This was during her period of shutting herself inside her room and talking to nobody, so hanging around graveyards was a step up. Y'know. At least she was getting out. Scout always found herself drawn towards ghosts, the spirits of the dead. Of course there was no such things as ghosts. Ghosts were fake. She's gone to 'haunting' sites in and around New York. No Ghosts. It was fun to pretend though. That feeling you get when you fully shut your brain off and operate on pure emotion. That gentle chill running up your spine when the sounds of footsteps are in the distance and you jump to conclusions, it's gotta be a ghost. Give herself up to her primal fear.

But now? Fuck that. Fuck em. Scout could not give less of a shit.

A twig snapped in the distance. Either a ghost or a rodent. Whatever, fuck em. Fuck you ghost.

She threw a third rock at the grave marker. She must have threw too hard because that rock ricocheted off the face of the marker and caught Scout right in the forehead.

Scout cursed. She clutched her head, nearly losing her balance. She was smart enough to brace her elbow against the grave stone before that could happen. But, still, her forehead swelled like a sonofabitch.

Clarice didn’t know if it was the old stories her mother had told her. The myths and legends. The inbuilt fear of the dead coming back. Clarice wasn’t all that religious, nor did she entirely buy into the idea, but she didn’t really disbelieve it either. It was one of life’s maybes. Or, on a more basic level, maybe it was just the fact that you couldn’t punch a ghost. Ghosts did whatever the fuck they wanted.

The bottom line was that Clarice hated graveyards. They made her itch. And at night? Who the fuck went into a graveyard at night?

Apparently, the answer was ‘her new sister.’ Future sister. Whatever. Clarice had only found out a week ago that this was even going to be a thing. She hadn’t known her dad was seeing anyone until then.

That was fine, she supposed. She hadn’t told her dad that she was dating Conrad, either. That shit’s his own business. And she didn’t mind the idea of him getting married, in theory. Maybe she felt a little weird about having a non-Navajo parent. And maybe she was a little afraid that this would just turn into a marriage like her parents had once had. But if it made her dad happy, then she wasn’t going to complain. And Debbie seemed nice.

Scout, though? Well, Clarice wasn’t sure yet.

Clarice’s feet crunched on various twigs. No stealth at all. She squinted in the darkness, until she heard some distant swears and saw a silohette near a headstone. Scout? Probably. One way to be sure.

Scout wasn't scared of nuffin'. She was no scaredy cat. So when Clarice started squawking and Scout let out a shrill yelp, it wasn't because Clarice, the six foot brute of a girl, totally snuck up on her. She wasn't spooked so hard she lost her balance and fell off the grave marker with about as much grace as a sack of bricks. Nope. That was just the wind.

Yeah. The wind.

She landed back-first into the sod and the earth, legs sticking straight up against the tomb stone. It was foolish. Scout looked like a fucking idiot. There were worse places to land, yeah, but it knocked the wind out of her and it was really, really hard to stay mad when you're seeing stars. She could sure as hell try though.

"Clarice," Scout said. It came out sounding less gruff than she intended. She sounded like a child not getting her way, and *that* only served to irritate her. "Wha - What are you...?"

Scout kicked one of her feet off the tombstone and flopped onto her belly with less grace than a sack of bricks. She got up. She made a face. How the hell did she get grass stains on her jeans? Fuck. Scout looked up at Clarice, her hands brushing at the back of her jacket.

Maybe yelling had been a bad idea. Well, no use whining about spilt milk and graveyard grass stains. Now Scout was rolling around on her belly, and it was kind of awkward. Clarice hoped she hadn’t caused her to break anything, but mostly it seemed like only her dignity was a little bruised.

“The graveyard’s not that far from the road, y’know. Plus you’re throwing rocks, and there’s not all that many places to go this late. Trust me, I ran off all the time when I was a kid. Not that I’d go into the graveyards, but… yeah.”

Clarice shifted uneasily, looking around at the various gravestones, before trotting forward and offering a hand for assistance.

“You alright? ...I mean, you shouldn’t really be sitting on a corpse-rock to begin with.”

Scout squinted. That made a bit of sense actually. She clicked her tongue, brushing off stray particles of dirt from the belly of her shirt. Her knees burned for reasons Scout was unaware of. No way she scraped them on the fall. Maybe it was the angle she fell at? Clarice walked over to her, shoes squeaking against the dew, and held her hand out. Scout always thought she had boyish hands. Short fingernails, tough knuckles. It was a source of anxiety for her when she was in middle school. But if Scout's hands were boyish, Clarice's were beyond manly. They dwarfed Scout's. That realization made Scout furrow her brows.

"Why do people get so antsy around graveyards?" Scout asked. "It's like the dead's going to rise up any day now."

Her future step-sister was right about one thing though; Scout's dignity had been bruised, and it wasn't just a little bruise either. The bruise was about the size of Scout's fist, and it was slapped across her forehead like a bullseye. Clarice helped Scout up to her feet, all the while acting like she could not see it. But she could, Scout thought. She was just too nice to say anything about it.

Scout mumbled a 'thank you'. For helping her up, of course. She found it difficult to look Clarice in the eye. Clarice had asked her if she was alright and - of course the answer was no, definitely not. She was the opposite of 'alright'. But... Okay, Scout hated beating around the bush, but there was no way she could come right out and say what was wrong. No way in hell. Scout was already worried about whether Clarice was judging her as it was.

“Well, uh… if the zombie apocalypse did happen, graveyards have to be the top three terrible places to be at the start. Labs and morgues being the other two. But yeah, remind me to tell you some of the stuff my mom taught me when I was a kid. Somewhere more well-lit, though.”

Clarice watched Scout as she awkwardly squirmed. The vivid orange of her hair was a big pull on the eye. Obviously, Clarice had seen orange hair before. She wasn’t a hermit. But family-wise, no-one had orange hair. They were a big ol’ pack of brunettes or darker.

“This whole new family thing was kind of abrupt, huh?” Clarice made a little jazz hand gesture. “’Surprise! New parent, new sister! Changes for everyone! We’re probably gonna have to move, because this house can barely fit two people to begin with! It probably won’t be out of town, but given the rest of the changes who fucking knows! Cool?’”

Clarice lowered her hands.

“No offence to you or your mother or anything. But yeah. I can see where you might get 'shit' from.”